VISIONING WITH ASIAN YOUTH

Abstract

Institutionalization of youth leadership and down-sizing of the role of the youth movement We have witnessed during the early and middle periods of the twentieth century that new leadership emerged in the process of destruction of the traditional values and authorities and through the establishment of new order. If we look at Korea, young people of those periods awakened at an early age and rose to become national leaders in the crisis-filled modern period. They experienced the fall of feudal dynasty, colonization by foreign power and division of the nation. The hunger and poverty these leaders had faced at an early age led to their concern for social problems. The restrictions on opportunity and growth forced them to devote themselves intensely to the pursuit of new social order. The North Korean president Kim Il Sung led the partisan army from his early twenties. When the South Korean former president Park Chunk Hee carried out his coup, he was in his thirties. I believe that such cases did not happen only in Korea. In the fields of politics, economics, the military and culture, we can find such examples in every country in Asia. Even the Bible says that Jesus started his mission to restructure the world from the age of thirty. The present Asian ecumenical leaders are persons who created many myths when they were young. Although the trends are a little different according to the patterns of social development in our respective countries, still it is very clear that we young people are living the time of our youth under the structures and institutions that were established by those (formerly) young people. Therefore, the period of our youth and theirs are different. Unlike us, their decision was that of the movement, and they did not have to spend much time getting approval from higher bodies. Their leadership also has a tendency to depend on special relations between people. Today they are the older generation. We, the new generation, have grown in comparatively stable surroundings compared to the past and in addition to this we are not required to carry out the same role and responsibility that burdened them. Disappearance of the lay movement and exit for the youth movement The youth movement is identified as one of the lay movements, and the ecumenical movement has been generated by young lay people. However, the historical irony is that the ecumenical movement nourished by the lay people has resulted in the disappearance of the lay movement. Let me quote from an article by the Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, in Echoes 4 (1993) Laity in the Ecumenical Movement. The laity have almost disappeared from ecumenical discussion nowadays. This is all the more striking in that, only a generation ago, laity was an ecumenical keyword . . . . What caused the remarkable disappearance of this key ecumenical concept? First, was the inevitable process of institutionalization, and with it the diversification of the ecumenical movement. As a result of institutionalization, many ecumenical initiatives at local, national, regional and international level, which originally depended on the commitment of lay people, have now been incorporated into permanent church structure. Korean ecumenical youth have voluntarily devoted themselves to the realization of democracy and human rights, standing in the front lines of struggle, and through this movement they have formed new leadership. But to our regret, during the past five or six years, youth leadership has stopped growing in the church and has been scattered in many parts of the society. This has happened first because the church has no room to accept the new generation. The demand of the institutionalized church to young people was for a license, i.e., a graduation certificate from seminary and ordination as pastor. As a result, the ecumenical youth movement has produced many high-quality jobless activists. …